CD Reviews

This CD has more industrial talent than a roomful of Reznors

skarecreau | San Francisco, CA USA | 07/15/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is the fourth album by Phoenix, AZ industrial artists Vampire Rodents. Musically, Daniel Vahnke has really pulled off the sound that I think he was striving for in earlier releases, what I think of as older Meat Beat Manifesto shoved into a roomful of chamber musicians, the result being an industrial/hip-hop beat layered over orchestral compositions. This album could've disintegrated into chaos, as most of the songs have different guest vocalists from other industrial bands (who also, apparently, each wrote their own lyrics as well), but VR keeps eveybody on track musically so to create a cohesive whole. Daniel Vahnke, the band's vocalist, only steps up to the mic on four songs, leaving the rest of that duty to the singers from such bands as Chemlab, Death Ride 69, Battery, 16 Volt, Babyland (reprising "Zygote," a song that was previously released under the band named Recliner, which was a collaboration between Babyland and VR), Hate Dept., Society Burning, and many others. In all, it's got twenty-two tracks of strange, strange music... This album is not as offensive or weird as some of their earlier material (especially their rare debut album, "War Music" -- it's guaranteed to offend almost everyone at some point!), so if you were turned off by "Premonition" or "Lullaby Land," you might still find something worthwhile in "Clockseed." This is a must for any fan of industrial music who yearns for something different from the norm."